Lust, Caution: The Story, the Screenplay, and the Making of the Film
by Eileen Chang, Wang Hui Ling, James Schamus
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Book Summary Information
Author: Eileen Chang, James Schamus, Wang Hui LingEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-04
ISBN: 0375425241
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of Lust, Caution: The Story, the Screenplay, and the Making of the Film
Book Review: A fluid translation of a captivating tale
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book first in Chinese and then in English because I wanted to know how it was translated. Even for the Chinese reader Eileen Chang's original text could be hard to follow and necessitated rereading to fully grasp the details. Chang's writing is famously dense, lush, sensuous, and chock full of puns, symbolism and suggestion. She wrote with a vocabulary distinctive to her era and to her world. Her description of colors, for example, can be foreign to many contemporary Chinese readers. To translate her work will therefore inevitably strip the writing of that period flavor. Julia Lowell did an admirable job in presenting Chang's story in a very fluid and stylish manner in English, even if she could not adequately convey the mood that Chang evoked. In fact, it was easier to follow the plot by reading the English translation.
Unlike her other fiction pieces, Chang's Lust|Caution was extremely spare. Though Chang had always been precise and terse with her language she never spared details. In Lust|Caution, however, she seemed to have deliberately skipped some descriptions. Chang provided the motive for the two central characters to become drawn to each other: Chia-chih and Mr. Yee chose their diametrically opposite paths during Japan's invasion of China but in the process both ended up emotionally repressed, insecure, and isolated. This void drew them together, but Chang only informed the readers that they had become intimate twice without further details. This was unlike her other novels/novellas that at least briefly described the seduction (Red Rose, White Rose) or what the character was thinking as she got intimate with her lover (Love in a Fallen City). Such deliberate omissions added to the mystique of Chia-chih's impulsive and fateful decision at the end, leaving readers lingering with imagination and postulation long after they finished the story. For Chang's fans, in particular, we wonder if the conciseness stemmed from Chang's reluctance to delve into a personal wound that inspired the story.
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